Macbook Air 2018 or Mac Mini 2018?

[Rix1010]

I want to migrate back to MacOS.

I had a MBA 2011 and replaced it with Microsoft Surface Pro 4 2016. It's portable, but now I'm usually working in one place and find the Surface buggy. Plus, it's struggling to keep up (I think it's the 4GB RAM).

Anyway, as I don't want to spend €2000 for a MBP 2018, I'm looking at a MBA 2018 or Mac Mini 2018 (I already have a decent screen, Apple keyboard and trackpad).

If I get the Mac Mini, I will get hold of a iPad for portable work (though, I usually work in my home office). I'd maybe look at getting an iPad Pro in the future. Though, I'd prefer to have one machine.

The MBA 2018 looks like a good option. I don't do any photo/film editing, but use loads of tabs, stream video and have Microsoft Office's suite open all the time. But I am worried about the MBA 2018's performance and wonder if it will last 5-6 years.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Rodney Dangerfield]

I just purchased the Mac Mini 2018 (i7, 32 GB RAM, 1TB HD) and have absolutely NO REGRETS!...Very fast!

In addition, above should be more future proof than MBA 2018!

 

[- rob -]

I think this is a very good question and you may be happy either way. A few comments:

I do not know if 5-6 years is a reasonable time frame for either though. I think expectations for machine lifetimes for contemporary good performance should be more in the 3-4 time range.

At that time the machine should be sold for the max possible and that put toward a new machine. I think you may get as much value out of the machine rather than depreciating it down to almost zero two years later. Particularly because Apple is now in the habit of making bigger ecosystem advances in 3-4 years that 5-6 year old machines would lack and make less favorable.

I primarily use my 2018 MBA in clamshell mode at a workstation, but need it to be portable for a variety of reasons. I was unsure about the power of the machine, I run more applications and services than you describe for development. I use four different Spaces and multiple instances of Pycharm an IDE with sometimes many, may tabs across the spaces.

I also use the office suite on occasion, and bigger apps like Photoshop.

I'm using the 16GB RAM version on the machine, which I think makes a big difference for my performance. But I do not note that the machine is particularly held up from the well discussed 7W CPU. The MBA as a system is fast.

That said, I could have kept using my 2015 11" MBA when I needed to go portable and gone for a mac mini as my workstation. This would have been faster and I think a better value for the desk. I am about to evaluate the $700 eGPU add-on to my 2018 MBA to see how it improves the docking experience and video performance of that machine.

That is obviously not a route many would want to take due to the cost, but I don't want to manage two computers. So hopefully it will work for me.

I do think Dangerfield has a great point that the mini may be a great choice for you. (provided you have the equipment or are budgeting in for the peripherals. (I use a P2715Q which can go as low as $330)

I think a lot has to do with how important portability is to you. I can tell you the 2018 MBA is very nice its compactness, build quality, inclusion of touch id and the screen.

 

[Mainsail]

I think it boils down to this: Do you frequently need to work on complex/large documents & data with multiple windows while away from your home/office? If so, I would recommend the MBA. If you can do most of your heavy lifting at your home/office, then a Mac Mini + iPad is a great option. You can be productive with an iPad and create content, and it is better than a laptop for some things: drawing/sketching, taking handwritten notes, reading, annotating documents, consuming content, etc..but it is more cumbersome when dealing with large/complex documents and multiple files.

In fact, if you can substantially limit your content creation to the home/office, you might even consider the Mac Mini + large iPhone option. This requires that you learn how to efficiently review documents, communicate and respond promptly with the iPhone, without getting sucked into the vortex of expectation that you have a laptop with you 24/7. So, you turn the iPhone into your PDA and kind of refuse to do much content creation unless you are at your desk with a nice ergonomic workstation. It can work for some folks, but definitely not everyone.

BTW - Personally, I would go with the good old fashion MacBook Air + iPhone combo.....well, that's what I use anyway.

 

[auxbuss]

My main machine is an MBP, but... I got the new MBA instead of a new iPad + keyboard. I have an older iPad, but I use the MBA far more. The iPad is now only for reading books and as a kitchen timer. fwiw, I'll probably replace the MBP with a Mac Mini when its time comes. If you can find the base MBA at ~1000, then it's a great machine.

tl;dr; I'd go for Mac Mini + MBA (base 128/8)